


Lullaby

by cantadora_09



Category: Dracula (TV 2020)
Genre: AU, F/M, Geth, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:08:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27838099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cantadora_09/pseuds/cantadora_09
Summary: Dracula and Agatha still remain on theDemeterone-on-one. But the coast is far away, and they both know it too well.
Relationships: Dracula & Agatha Van Helsing, Dracula/Agatha Van Helsing
Comments: 13
Kudos: 39





	Lullaby

Sokolov tried to stay. Muttered something about how the captain should go to the bottom with his ship, that he would not allow her to sacrifice herself alone... Something else. Agatha did not listen. Almost forcibly pushing Sokolov into the boat and making sure that it sailed a sufficient distance so as not to be affected by the explosion, she moved away from the side, and... stumbled upon Dracula.

‘Why did you let them go?’ looking at the Count and feeling her head emptying, and her legs becoming cold and heavy, asked Agatha.

‘You can't eat them all,’ Dracula said with a shrug. He turned around. ‘Let's go on deck.’

‘What for?’

‘From there you can see the bay.’

After watching Dracula climb the steps leading to the captain's bridge, Agatha gathered her last strength and took a step behind him.

It was cold on the bridge and the stupefying smell of the sea. Agatha leaned aboard, thinking briefly why the scent was so clear just now. It must have been some sort of fresh air intoxication after being in a stuffy cabin, she decided.

‘How are you feeling?’

Dracula stood at the helm, holding a heavy wooden wheel with one hand and resting the other on a time-polished rim.

‘Mortal like never before.’ She closed her eyes, grinning. ‘What about you?’

The answer slid along the edge of her mind, barely touching it.

She opened her eyes.

‘Look,’ Dracula held out his hand and leaned forward slightly. Agatha glanced where he was pointing. ‘The pawn has reached the eighth line.’ He hesitated and, straightening, turned to her. ‘It's a pity there won't be another queen.’

She didn't answer. The salty air blew over hot cheeks, scratching at the skin. Running her hand along the rail of the side, Agatha came across a burr sticking out of an old tree. Blindly stroked and circled it. She remembered the fuse left unlit in the hold, the helpless gaze of Pyotr getting into the boat, the blood on the deck, the gallows, and the dimly glittering number nine on the wide-open door.

And also – candles in shabby bronze candelabra, an elegant chandelier on the ceiling, and a brown-gray tint of stone walls. Freedom and lightness and the feeling when you can say what and how you really want, and not because it is good, decent, and correct. When the pieces moving around the board are not a goal, but an excuse to look into each other's eyes.

Agatha had a week to think about it. A week in order to find a hidden unaccounted box, to listen to unusual and suspicious sounds, to the whisper of the sea, to herself – to think and remember.

‘The kiss of the vampire is an opiate.’

Many years ago, working in a hospital in Budapest, an inexperienced nurse who did not even know the basics of chemistry and at first confused drugs for the stomach and for healing wounds, one day she mistakenly drank a tincture of Philonium* left by a doctor for one of the patients.

Agatha remembered well the insane delight and acute excitement that seized her then. She remembered how she left in the middle of the watch and wandered around the city, gasping for breath from incomprehensible happiness rolling up to her throat, smiling a drunken smile, looking into the faces of passers-by in search of something unknown.

None of this was in the least like what she was experiencing... in cabin number nine.

She thought he had somehow brought her to his castle. Thought... God, thought what?

‘Would you like to look at the shore?’ Dracula's voice pulled Agatha out of her stupor. She lifted her head and stared at him. ‘This is where the journey ends,’ Dracula said.

Agatha nodded. Letting go of the board, she took a few steps towards the Count and stopped opposite.

‘I wanted to blow up the ship,’ she said. ‘Down there…’ she hesitated, ‘a gunpowder…’

‘I know. Good job.’

For a minute Agatha stood motionless, and then stepped forward and buried her forehead in his chest.

‘How tired I am,’ she said, feeling the tears run uncontrollably down her cheeks. Somewhere in the periphery of audibility, the steering wheel creaked, and his hands wrapped around her. ‘If you knew how tired I am of you.’

For several long seconds, she simply cried, as if this could help expel from herself or calm down the disappointment, pain, and resentment that were tearing her from within.

Waking up from a dream can be difficult, the Mother Superior once said. It was not the first time that Agatha had to admit that she was right.

She cried, and Dracula held her with both hands, without saying a word, and minutes passed by them, silently flowing into the darkness.

A shudder that engulfed her body as her tears dried up forced her to pull away. Raising her head, Agatha looked at Dracula. He looked at her in silence, and nothing could be read on his face.

‘Do that already,’ Agatha begged and tried to escape. ‘For God's sake!’

Her efforts didn't make him budge one iota. Instead of answering, he only grabbed her tighter, hugging her.

Once again pressed to the slightly damp fabric of his shirt, Agatha was silent for a while.

‘When I’m not constantly busy running after you or from you, I start to get scared,’ she complained.

Dracula laughed.

Running a hand through her hair, he made her move away and look at him.

‘Be patient,’ he touched her cheek with his hand. He spoke after a pause: ‘It will end very soon, I promise.’

Silently Agatha looked into his eyes.

The barely swaying wooden planking of the bridge chilled her feet through the thin soles of her shoes. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a seagull flying past the port side.

‘When I was a little boy…’ said Dracula.

‘You were a little boy?’

‘Hush,’ he touched the corner of her mouth with his thumb. ‘When I was little boy,’ he continued, touching her hair again and burying his fingers in the heap of tangled strands, ‘I had a nurse. An old woman from the Hutsul Carpathians. I was afraid to sleep alone in the room, and she sang me a lullaby – she sang to me until I calmed down and stopped struggling with sleep. I still remember that song.’

He ran his hand over her cheek and began to sing.

He had a warm, deep voice, – baritone, Agatha remembered. This tone of voice is called a baritone.

The song was calm and gentle, slow and simple. Agatha did not understand the words – the language was unfamiliar to her: not Hungarian, Polish, or Romanian, which she had heard where she lived. One phrase was repeated constantly – full of light hissing, like the whisper of a wave.

‘What does it mean?’ Agatha asked during the break between two verses.

‘Sleep, love, everything is fine,’ said Dracula.

Agatha nodded absently and laid her head on his shoulder.

Dracula's voice became quieter but still sounded confident. Concentrating on the lullaby melody, Agatha closed her eyes.

When he picked her up in his arms and carried her somewhere, Agatha did not resist. She only moved when she discovered they were on the passenger deck.

‘Not number nine,’ she said.

He smiled, stopping at the next door.

‘The sixth is free.’

Shutting the cabin door behind him, he went inside and lowered Agatha onto the made bed against the wall.

She watched him sit on the edge of the bed, forcing herself not to turn away or move.

Still, she shuddered when he took her hand.

Bringing her palm to his face, Dracula pressed his lips to it.

Agatha was silent, staring at the long strands that had strayed from his perfect hairstyle, darkening against the background of her unnaturally pale skin.

‘My patience is running out,’ she said.

Dracula raised his head and looked at her with a smile.

‘Just a little more,’ he asked.

She could not tell how long they sat, looking into each other's eyes, before Dracula turned away and, taking possession of Agatha's palm again, pulled it towards him.

Agatha looked down at the open collar of his wide white blouse. With one hand, Dracula was holding an aspen stake against his chest, with the other he put Agatha's hand over the stake.

Agatha looked up at his face.

Dracula smiled.

‘Free me,’ he said.

Agatha licked her dry lips. Hundreds of thoughts and feelings attacked her at once, but all she could ask was:

‘Why?’

He paused.

‘I have many answers,’ turning away, he looked at the horizon visible in the porthole; the sky above the hills was beginning to brighten. ‘So many answers have accumulated over four hundred years.’ Dracula turned to her. ‘But the main one,’ he smiled, ‘or, rather, the one that now seems to be the most important to me – I don't want you to run after me or from me.’

Agatha was silent. Her fingers clenched and unclenched on his hand, which wrapped around the stake.

‘But that’s not necessary at all,’ she said, and pulling the stake toward her, pulled it out of Dracula’s palm and threw it away.

**Author's Note:**

> * Filonium is an ancient opium-based remedy for the treatment of stomach cramps and dysentery. According to a number of sources, it was used in the English Pharmacopoeia until 1867.


End file.
